Use and Usability of Dictionaries: Common Sense and Context Sensibility?

Krista Varantola (University of Tampere, Finland)

A b s t r a c t

This article discusses the potential and usability of future dictionaries from two specific angles: from the point of view of language professionals and from the perspective of dictionaries as tools in an integrated network. The discussion is based on ideas first expressed by Sue Atkins in 1996. It is argued that in the future it should be possible to customize dictionaries according to user profiles and that dictionaries should not be regarded as stand-alone products. In fact, the potential of user-controlled search chains could be a major innovation in an integrated electronic dictionary. It is also claimed that the label "learner's dictionary" is misleading, because many users are not learners in the prototypical sense of the word, but rather non-native speakers using a monolingual dictionary for reasons which differ considerably from those of young language learners. Finally, a suggestion is made how frame semantics could be applied in building bridges between general and specialist language use and in helping users to find the information they need.

1 . I n t r o d u c t i o n

Dict ionar ies p rovoke a cont inuum of react ions in their users, and for this reason, they are rarely treated as neutral sources of reference. On the contrary, an emot ional love-hate re la t ionship would often be a more appropr ia te descript ion of the professional user's at t i tude towards his or her favouri te d ic t ionar i e s .

What , then, makes a dict ionary user-fr iendly? There may be no s imple answer to this quest ion, as reasons seem to be manifold. Before even a t tempt ing to formulate an answer , we have to decide on the type of dict ionary and the type of user we have mind. In addit ion, we have to de te rmine whether we are only d iscuss ing the way in which dict ionaries are used, or are we also a t tempting to d iscover how the user benefi ts from the information avai lable in the dict ionary. Dict ionary users can roughly be divided into language learners , non-profess ional users and professional users (cf. Varantola 1997). Dic t ionar ies can thus be used in various ways in language teaching and language learning but also consulted as tools in "non-

Use and Usability of Dictionaries: Common Sense and Context Sensibility? 31

learning" act ivi t ies , for example in reading comprehens ion , text production and in professional t ranslat ion.

Below, I will discuss the potential of future dict ionar ies in the light of ideas first expressed by Sue Atkins in her plenary paper Bilingual dictionaries: Past, Present and Future (Atkins 1996). I will e laborate on some of the themes of the paper from two specific angles : first from the point of view "of language professionals as dictionary users and then from the perspect ive of dic t ionar ies as tools in an integrated network of different types of reference sources.

In her paper, Sue Atkins ant icipates that, in the dict ionary of the future, the function of customizing the dictionary will ' come into its own' (1996: 531). Future dict ionary users would then be able to tailor the dict ionary according to their individual user profiles. This predict ion is also one of the leading themes in this article and the user I have in mind is a skilled user who needs dict ionaries in his or her professional act ivi t ies . A prototypical incarnation of this type of user would be a t ranslator or a technical communicator .

Atkins also advocates the principles that the user 's needs are paramount , in dic t ionary-making and that the 'the ideal dict ionary should offer the skilled user the chance to make his or her own judgment ' (p. 523). It is e a s y to agree with this idea and I will apply it as a guiding principle when discussing professional dictionary use. (Cf. also Varantola 1994).

In our survey of dictionary use (Atkins & Varantola 1997:1), we claim that: 'There are two direct routes to more effective dict ionary use: the first is to radically improve the dictionary: the second is to radically improve the users ' . Later on, I have been inclined to side with the user and place more responsibil i ty on the dictionary makers who, as professionals , should have a holistic view of what their dict ionary offers to its users (Kall iokuusi & Varantola 1998).

I will deliberately continue in this vein - assessing dict ionaries from the consumer perspective - also in this context. In other words , I will b e shamelessly selfish and ask for the impossible . I will advocate for a dictionary that will a lways adapt to my needs and a lways be ready to provide me with exactly the answer that I need and will also agree with. I a lso expect the dict ionary to be able to give satisfactory answers t o . t hose questions that I forget to ask. So I will require that the dictionary a n t i c i p a t e my needs and remind me of al ternative routes that I can take in my search to find an appropriate way to express what I wish to express .

32 Krista Varantola

2 . T h e p r o f e s s i o n a l d i c t i o n a r y u s e r

M y purpose is to d i scuss aspects of dictionary use and usability from the point of v iew of the professional users who need dict ionaries in their work, and use them pr imar i ly as reference tools in what we could describe as "lexical knowledge management" . M y users do not, then, use dict ionaries to learn a language, nor to perform a dic t ionary-use task designed by the i r teacher or a researcher to assess their competence as dict ionary users and to see if they can benef i t from the dict ionary information in a context p rede te rmined by somebody e lse .

The professional users normally use a dictionary to perform a task tha t they get paid for. They m a y be translat ing into their nat ive language, L I , or from it into a foreign language, their L2, or they may be producing text wi th no single source text as a starting point . In other words , their j o b may be to produce a text wi th or without specific background material . Often their L2 is English and their na t ive language a less widely used language, such as Finnish . These users differ from all those academics and other professionals w h o nowadays wr i te in English i r respect ive of their nat ive language in tha t these users are a lso language professionals , l inguists. They should therefore be able to descr ibe their dict ionary needs as l inguists .

I will mainly d iscuss professional dict ionary use in the context of L2 t ex t product ion because it is in many respects far more challenging than LI t ex t product ion. In L2 produc t ion , dic t ionar ies are explicitly used to provide the users with nat ive speaker compe tence that they lack in the L2 so that they that can get the conf i rmat ion and reassurance they need for their l inguistic choices . When working into the L I , this need for "a second opinion" often goes unnot iced because the user can normal ly make automat ic adjustments to the dict ionary informat ion. For example , when we find a number of a l ternat ives as po ten t ia l t ransla t ion equiva lents for an L2 word, w e automatical ly pick out the best candidate or even decide on something complete ly different - someth ing not even listed in the entry - as the bes t equivalent for the LI context . The choice of the best express ion in an L2 context , on the o ther hand, is not so straightforward because the user cannot benefit from his or her nat ive language intuit ion and knowledge of the potent ia l range of the a l te rna t ives . It is also very demanding to be c r ea t ive and innovat ive in an acceptable way in a foreign language.

Al though professionals often p roduce texts in their L2, and are learners in that sense, very impor tan t dis t inct ions need to be m a d e at this stage be tween the concep ts of a learner and a non-nat ive speaker , although these

Use and Usability of Dictionaries: Common Sense and Context Sensibility? 33

two words are often used synonymously and in a somewhat narrow fashion in the l i terature. In many contexts, it seems, that ' learner' has actually begun to mean a non-native speaker of English. This is unders tandable when we think of the global impor tance of English but unfortunate in the sense that it has led to some mis leading generalizations about learners.

A learner is commonly understood to be a young person who needs a dictionary in a classroom, in a sys temat ic language-learning si tuation and this att i tude is also sometimes reflected in learners ' dict ionaries . It seems to me that, if the prototype learner in the lexicographers ' mind is a young, non-native speaker of English, lexicographers might forget that this learner is also a native speaker of another language. In fact, the learner can be a ma tu re person who is very competent and fluent in his or her own language. I take up this point here because I think that lexicographers occasionally overlook the fact that the dict ionary user is a nat ive speaker of some other language. I will get back to these matters later, but let me jus t say in this context, that I do not think that, at the advanced level of dictionary use, we need to make a dist inction between a native speaker ' s or a non-nat ive speaker 's d ic t ionary. Instead, we can think in terms of act ive and passive uses of monolingual dict ionaries. In short , I think that we could also apply concepts that are familiar to us from bilingual dict ionaries to monolingual lexicography.

It is naturally unfair to the dict ionary makers to demand that a general print dictionary should cater to a w i d e range of potential users and,, at the same t ime, function as a customized dictionary for a more demanding user . The dictionary maker naturally has to take into account all potential users and pay special attention to the largest groups of users and buyer s . Never the less , I intend to go on being unfair and focus on the vision of the customized dict ionary referred to above. I can therefore also demand that the future dictionary p a y attention to the contexts in which the professional user needs dictionary he lp . In other words , I suggest that the only way to overcome the present user d i l emma of general (context-free) answers to context-sensi t ive quest ions is to try to predict the reasons why the user looks up a particular headword and then try to provide a set of adequate a n s w e r s . These answers can be presented in a mult i - layered hypertext format tha t does not overwhelm the user with superfluous data and irrelevant and redundant pieces of information that the user does not want to have. (Cf, Atkins 1996:522).

34 Krista Varantola

3 . U s e a n d u s a b i l i t y

When s tudying dic t ionary use in translat ion, a few regular pat terns of behaviour have emerged and I have formulated these as axioms about professional dic t ionary use (Varantola 1998): • Dic t ionary users resor t to dict ionaries to solve a con tex t -dependen t

problem • Users look for equiva len ts in the other language, but they also n e e d

reassurance and d o not therefor like to find equivalents which they do not recognize

• Users also need information relating to longer stretches of text than a single lexical i t em

• Users try to find non-dic t ionary type information in dict ionar ies because it is not readily and systematical ly available in other sources. Of these proposed ax ioms , context -dependency and the need for

reassurance are par t icular ly re levant for this article because they relate to the usabili ty of the dic t ionary information. One basic character is t ic of usabil i ty is the deg ree of confidence with which the user applies the information found in the dict ionary. The advanced user will often find a poss ible solution to his or her dict ionary query but never theless r emain hes i tan t about the appl icabi l i ty of the suggested solution in the par t icular context the user is work ing with (cf. also Atkins and Varantola 1997). In such s i tua t ions it can happen that the user 's performance does not match his or her professional compe tence . The user k n o w s that there is a better solution but has not been able to find it in the dict ionary. It is a kind of t ip-of- the- tongue p h e n o m e n o n in dict ionary use and often a major source of frustration. The user 's uneas iness can be due to the fact that the print dictionary entry is too conc i se (because of restr ic t ions imposed on the entry by linearity and space) to g ive the users enough information to base their decisions on. In ideal cases , when these res t r ic t ions no longer apply, the user finds what he or she is looking for, recognizes the best solution, decides to accept it, feels reassured and confident , and happy about the way the dictionary entry w a s s t ructured.

4 . D i c t i o n a r i e s in t h e p r o f e s s i o n a l ' s t o o l b o x

Dic t ionar ies need not be regarded as s tand-alone lexical tools that should provide all the answers that the users need about language in use. In my

Use and Usability of Dictionaries: Common Sense and Context Sensibility? 35

vision, the future dictionary is rather an integrated tool or a number of tools in a professional user's toolbox where it coexists with other language technology products such as encyclopedic sources of reference, different types of corpora, corpus analysis tools, such as WordSmith tools or Word Sketches type software, as well as corpus compilat ion software, t ranslat ion memory systems, etc. (Cf. the respect ive Web pages) An integrated dict ionary would be compatible with other similar tools. It should thus be easy to move from one tool to another and also to customize the dictionary to match the user profile and individual preferences. The users would then be able to synthesize the information they obtain from the different sources and use the synthesized information as the basis for their own con tex t -dependen t dec is ion-making .

How then could the usability of dict ionary information be improved? Many good ideas have already been put into practice, but the print format has prevented the lexicographers from fully exploit ing the potent ia l of these innovations. Yet, completely new ideas a l so need to be tested. I agree wi th Sue Atkins when she says that ' the future must be print dict ionaries and truly electronic d ic t ionar ies , ' compiled afresh for the new medium, enriched w i th new types of information the better to mee t the needs of the mul t i far ious users ' (1996:515). She also points out that the real challenge is not 'how the computer can help us to produce old-style dict ionaries better, but how it can help us to create something new' (p. 516). Below, I will make a few suggestions which could improve the usability of dictionary information.

5. S t a r t i n g f r o m b i l i n g u a l d i c t i o n a r i e s

Bilingual dict ionaries are often considered to be inferior to monolingual dict ionaries and language students are somet imes strongly advised aga ins t using them, at least as the only source. Yet, dict ionary use surveys h a v e shown that bilingual dict ionaries are the users' favouri tes. They are also typically the primary dictionaries consulted and monolingual d ic t ionar ies are used only after a bilingual dictionary has failed to give a definit ive answer. A bilingual dictionary is also often the only dict ionary owned by non­professional users. On the other hand, there are a number of bad and inadequate bilingual dict ionaries on the market which are s imply mis leading and good for very restricted purposes only, which is obviously one reason for their inferior reputation. Another reason is that bilingual d ic t ionar ies a re often grossly abused by inexperienced users. A t y p i c a l dict ionary user does not expect to need any instruct ions in the use of the dict ionary as long as h e

36 Krista Varantola

or she k n o w s the a lphabet . Upon reflection, this used to be the case w i th wris t wa tches and te lephones as well. In reali ty, dict ionaries can be loaded w e a p o n s in the hands of users who think that languages are codes and bil ingual d ic t ionar ies convers ion tables in which the r ight-hand side is a mir ror image of the left-hand side, only in another language and that the two s ides can be turned around without problems. Dic t ionary-based mis t rans la t ions are also a common source for hilarious bilingual jokes , but is it the fault of the d ic t ionary?

Yet, a bi l ingual dict ionary is a contradict ion in terms. N o such equ iva l ence ex is t s be tween two languages that would manda te a bilingual word list. Howeve r , as we know that the re are a number of excellent bilingual d ic t ionar ies on the market , I will have to reconsider my s t a t emen t . E q u i v a l e n c e is a very controversial concept in translat ion studies and it is controvers ia l also in lexicography, unless we decide to ignore the impl icat ion of sameness and bil ingual synonyms . There are few, if any, total synonyms wi th in one language, how could there then be total synonyms across l anguages? In other words , I think that we should rid ourselves of the rigid impl ica t ions that the notion of a translation equivalent carries and regard the gloss or glosses on the right hand side as approximat ions or keys to the mean ing of the entry word.

Profess ional users naturally k n o w about the true nature of " e q u i v a l e n c e " and they do not automat ica l ly expect the translat ion equivalent to be su i tab le for the target language context , but when they are working into their L2, au tomat ic mean ing ad jus tment is no longer straightforward and much more contex tua l information is needed. This has been realized in bilingual lex icography, where the dis t inct ion be tween pass ive and active d i c t iona r i e s is we l l -es tab l i shed but not so well-pract ised. There are, however , good bil ingual d ic t ionar ies on the market that have kept in mind users ' different needs and different l inguis t ic backgrounds . In particular, this seems to be the case with modern , cooperat ively produced bil ingual d ic t ionar ies b e t w e e n major languages , such as Engl ish and French.

In addi t ion, however , there are many, relatively new bilingual d ic t ionar ies on the market which pay very little at tention to the pass ive /ac t ive dis t inct ion and try to steer an unsys temat ic middle course , both in te rms of information ca tegor ies and their content . Print d i c t iona r i e s can b lame the dearth of information on space restr ic t ions but lack of space is no excuse for lack of sys temat ic approach. Electronic dict ionar ies have even fewer excuses left. Here space is not a concern, but the danger of an

Use and Usability of Dictionaries: Common Sense and Context Sensibility? 37

information overload certainly is and has always been even for pr in t dictionaries. Many studies have dealt with the problems of finding the relevant information in a long dictionary entry. This has resulted in a number of visual innovations in printing and has made it easier for. the user to spot the subdivisions and information categories more efficiently. Fur thermore , electronic dictionaries can benefit from a layered hypertext design.

A passive dictionary could also be "ac t iva t ed" by giving the user the possibility to access relevant corpus data - e.g. concordance lines from target-language corpora for the potential translation equivalents given in the entry. Another welcome facility would be a link to a thesaurus from the t rans la t ion equivalents . It should also be possible to access new corpus lines from the thesaurus information. The key word here is "possible" and it would be up to the user to decide whether he or she wants the addit ional information.

In fact, it may not be the static nature of a print or an off-line dic t ionary, nor the lack of neologisms in them that is as frustrating to the professional as is their inability to provide systematic access to more specific informat ion for users who are capable of deciding when they have seen enough. I would even go so far as to claim that the professional user needs fewer exp lana t ions but better access to well-selected raw data (e.g. access to a r e p r e s e n t a t i v e range of "real examples" ) for deduct ive decis ion-making. I think that the potential of user-controlled search chains could be one of the major innovat ions in "the truly electronic dict ionary" of the future. The appl icable results of these search chains can be individual lexical i tems, col locat ions, shorter or longer concordance lines from different corpus collections, etc . What is essential , however , is to r emember that the idea of these search chains is to give the users a key to the solution, but the dictionary need not a t tempt to solve the problem for them.

The electronic search process would thus s imulate the " m a n u a l " search systems practised today. When working on a text, t oday ' s professional users typically have a number of various types of dic t ionar ies , both bilingual and monolingual, within their reach. In addition, they may have access to a few resident electronic dict ionaries and encyclopedias , even a concordancer, smallish corpus collections, such as MicroConcord, and naturally an In t e rne t connect ion. In a sense, these users are already working with a ne twork of reference sources to get the results they want. The problem is that this is only virtually a network. The tools can hardly be said to be compat ible , as there are few links between them and every t ime the users moves from one tool to another they need to start from scratch again.

38 Krista Varantola

An obvious quest ion to ask here is, where lexicography ends and other language technology begins. I think that we can look at this issue pragmat ica l ly and see the different products as parts of a modular ne twork wi th seamless connect ions be tween the modules . For example , it will probably m a k e more sense to keep the corpus information and the sof tware re la ted to it separa te from the tradit ional dict ionary. The users, however , do not necessar i ly need to know where the information they are looking up is located, as long as it is directly accessible from the information that gives the inspirat ion to the next step in the search chain.

The alphabet ic order is an essent ia l condit ion for a print dictionary. Even if the compi la t ion is based on a different principle, on concept systems, for example , an a lphabet ic index is the key to finding the headword . In e lec t ronic d ic t ionar ies , we can still benefit from the alphabet ic order, e.g., in the display w i n d o w s , but we need not be straightjacketed by it. The free text search facility can lead us to all occurrences of the search chain in the electronic d i c t iona ry . This facility is particularly useful when we are not quite sure wha t we want to look up, when we are a t tempting to do a fuzzy search for someth ing that we cannot verbal ize or do not know even ex i s t s , but are never the less very happy to find. These fuzzy searches have proved very helpful with corpus searches (see e.g. Varantola, in print) , but they can also be used with dict ionary searches. In a sense, these fuzzy searches may give users - those users who have become stuck - a chance to j u m p to a new search strategy and new search chains . A fuzzy search approaches the ma t t e r indirect ly and interact ively with the users. The users apply their background knowledge and intui t ion about language, e.g., knowledge about collocational probabi l i t ies and restr ict ions, or their world knowledge of how things are connected and expressed in the outs ide world (See also Nesi 2000:139-143) .

6. S t a r t i n g f r o m m o n o l i n g u a l d i c t i o n a r i e s

There is actually not so much difference be tween bilingual and monolingual d ic t ionar ies . Monol ingual d ic t ionar ies need more space to define what the headword means but can benefit from the fact that they can use the same language in the defini t ions. Bil ingual d ic t ionar ies can express the meaning more succinctly but have to give it in ano ther language which has different conceptual d ivis ions and associa t ions from the left-hand side language. I t would thus seem logical to claim that it must be easier to descr ibe word meaning more accurate ly in monolingual d ic t ionar ies . On second thoughts, however , that c la im is probably an oversimplif icaton. The t radi t ional

Use and Usability of Dictionaries: Common Sense and Context Sensibility? 39

definition criteria of classification, substi tutabil i ty and the use of synonyms do not necessarily produce user-friendly defini t ions; paraphrases are often only approximations and a controlled definition language forces the lexicographers to use fuzzy, even unnatural ways of explaining, a kind of lexicographical beat-about- the-bush techniques. Users have all sorts of needs , from solving a normat ive dispute about the correct meaning, to doing crossword puzzles and applying the dict ionary information to contexts the dictionary has no c lue of. Is it thus impossible for the future monolingual dictionary to be customized to anticipate user needs or to let the user select the search path he or she wants to pursue?

Learners' dictionaries versus native speakers' dictionaries

Again, the prototypical user of a learner 's dict ionary is envisaged to be a young learner who is prompted to use the dictionary in a language learning context (See e.g. Nes i 2000:141 but as implied earlier in this article, a categorical classification of dict ionaries into learners ' and nat ive s p e a k e r s ' dict ionaries may be misleading. Perhaps a l ea rner ' s dict ionary is not such a fortunate label after all. I have argued that m a n y users are not learners in the prototypical c lassroom sense of the word, but rather non-nat ive speakers using a.monolingual dictionary.Yet, in the majority of dic t ionary-use tests, in which the bes t -known English learners ' dict ionaries (COBUILD, LDOCE, OALD and somet imes also CIDE) have been compared and evaluated, the philosophy behind the tests has been to see how well language learners perform teacher- or researcher-driven tasks imposed on the users.

In other words, user-driven tasks, in which the users would have taken the init iat ive to use the dictionary, have been rare and few evaluat ions h a v e been based on such observat ions (Cf. Nesi 2000). This is unders tandable , a s such tests are very difficult to carry out in a controlled fashion because of the high number of intervening individual factors and even uncontrol lable variables.Yet it would be very helpful to gain even a little information of the types of non-nat ive speaker's dict ionaries which are best suited for any particular user group. Now most of the avai lable ev idence is based on comments arising from individual exper iences and preferences.

What would happen if we gave up the d ichotomy learner vs. n a t i v e speaker and concentrated on the user ' s needs instead. Would that free us to think in novel ways about the future dict ionaries which could fill their slot or form a node in the network of integrated tools? Again, the user I have in

40 Krista Varantola

mind is the professional user who needs the monolingual dictionary for L2 text product ion. W e can study the various types of monolingual d i c t iona r i e s as a cont inuum of d ic t ionar ies for different user groups and different user needs . At one end , w e have the dictionaries or dict ionary informat ion in tended for language learning, at the other end, dict ionaries that would b e classif ied as na t ive speake r dict ionaries . However , a dist inction could also be made be tween ac t ive and passive user needs. As suggested above, I do th ink that this d is t inc t ion is also useful in monolingual lexicography, and it would increase the usabi l i ty of the dict ionaries , if the lexicographers paid a t tent ion to dif ferences be tween information types intended for act ive and pass ive use.

Until recently, large monolingual dic t ionar ies normally focused on the pass ive needs of the na t ive speaker and used or thodox, "sys tem-in terna l" defini t ion styles bu t t imes are changing. In my opinion, the New Oxford Dic t ionary of English ( N O D E 1998) is a case in point. The dict ionary provides corpus-based u s a g e examples and has modified the definition s tyle to bet ter suit the ave rage user. The corpus examples add an informat ion ca tegory needed by non-na t ive speakers who want to use the dict ionary in an ac t ive fashion. The d ic t ionary is not a " lea rner ' s dic t ionary", it is large, has a w ide range of vocabula ry and uses normal language in the definit ions, but it is cer tainly a profess ional u se r ' s dict ionary, also for a non-nat ive English speaker , m a y b e it is a k ind of " fus ion" dict ionary then.

By the way , on the not ion of definit ions, Hilary Nesi points out in her recent study on E F L dic t ionar ies (Nesi 2000:92) that there do not seem to be major differences in intel l igibi l i ty be tween the three major E F L d ic t iona r i e s COBUTLD, OALD and LDOCE (1987-89 edi t ions) . 'Apparently neither the res t r ic ted LDOCE def ining vocabulary nor COBUTLD folk definit ions make dict ionary reading qu icker or more successful. '

In his article on Contributions of Lexicography and Corpus Linguistics to a Theory of Language Performance, Patr ick Hanks (who at the t ime of the publ icat ion of N O D E was the Chief Editor of Current Dict ionar ies at the OUP) commen t s on how rapidly the convent ions of meaning and use can change (Hanks 2000) . H e also notes how unrel iable a nat ive s p e a k e r ' s in tui t ion is about h o w language and words are really used. Hanks calls for a theory of language per formance 'that is statistical and probabil is t ic ra ther than certain and cut -and-dr ied ' . Corpus evidence shows clearly that language is an ins t rument of h u m a n sociabil i ty and should be treated as such. We should therefore treat m e a n i n g s as events and not as objects. We should think

Use and Usability of Dictionaries: Common Sense and Context Sensibility? 41

of the meaning of a word as a meaning potential and replace t rad i t ional notions of meaning by concepts inherited from prototype theory. I hope tha t Hanks ' comments will succeed in blurring further the traditional d is t inc t ion be tween non-nat ive and native speaker dic t ionar ies and place addi t ional emphas is on a process where distinctions be tween monolingual d i c t iona r i e s are based on differences in user needs and competences and not on the i r linguistic backgrounds.

Definitions

Hanks (2000:7) also comments on how difficult it is for the user to understand what spider means if it is defined as 'an arachnid . . . having a narrow-waisted body and eight jo in ted legs'. If a user does not know what a spider is, then it is very unlikely that he or she will know what an arachnid is. A similar . observation was made by Kall iokuusi and Varantola about terminological definit ions (Kalliokuusi and Varantola 1998). We point out that glossary users often 'complain that the definit ions do not have enough contextual , real-world information'. The terminological ly correct def in i t ions are correct from the point of view of the domain-specif ic concept system, but useless to anyone unfamiliar with the concept system and knowledge structures of the domain. It would thus be much more user-friendly to def ine special field concepts in different ways for users with different knowledge backgrounds (See also T e m m e r m a n 2000 and Varantola in print). It is also interest ing to notice that very similar concerns have been expressed about difficult technical writing practices (Cf. e.g. Barker 1998).

It has long been the tradit ion in user guides of household appliances to base the instructions on the internal principles and specif icat ions of the system and to pay less at tention to how the user is likely to approach the new appliance. One perfect example can be traced to my own washing machine instructions which give the amount of wash that the machine can do in a washing cycle in kilograms of dry wash. Yet, I know of no washing machine that comes with scales, nor have I ever met a user w h o weighs the dry wash before placing it in the machine . The origin of this instruction is obvious. The technical specif icat ions and standards for a washing mach ine determine the capaci ty of the machine in terms of dry weight, but this is not what the user does. The same philosophy is prevalent also in many on- l ine help systems of common computer programs. T h e indexes of these help systems normally provide as search words the system-internal special te rms and conceptual izat ions which are often very different from the users '

42 Krista Varantola

conceptual iza t ion of the different functions and facilities. In a sense, the same problem occurs in many dict ionar ies . The accurate but difficult definit ion styles of many monolingual dict ionaries - following the principle that every word in the definition also occurs as a headword - produce def ini t ions which are not necessarily what the user is looking for. The user m a y actually prefer to unders tand the definition a t its first reading and to see the range of contexts in which the word has been recorded in current usage.

7 . A f u t u r e a p p r o a c h

A major issue in modern lexicography is how to benefit from all the corpus-based lexicographical work in different languages in order to produce various types of d ic t ionar ies be tween different language pairs. Atkins (1996:540-541) suggests a f rame-semant ic approach as a theoretical basis for user-friendly d ic t ionar ies . Dic t ionar ies based on frame semant ics would have a hyper text s t ructure , d isplay information 'without swamping the reader ' and cater to the specific needs of users and their varying degrees of competence . In addit ion to being appl icable in multil ingual lexicography, frame semant ics could also prove useful in monolingual (lexical) knowledge management by which I mean the abil i ty to access 'the information you need to have ' (cf. Car l iner 1999:85).

Wha t I am suggesting is the application of frame semant ics as a solution to finding information "in the user 's own terms". It was argued above that terminologis ts are increas ingly worr ied about the usability of systematic and conceptual ly structured def ini t ions which, from the system-internal point of v iew, are logical and consistent . F rom the user ' s angle, however , they can be problemat ic , because the definit ions are context-free and also impene t rab le , if the user does not possess the background knowledge of a field special is t . Corpus evidence could tell us what kind of language is used by non-specia l i s t s about special-field ac t iv i t i e s in particular special-field domains and frames. It could thus be possible to build bridges be tween specialist ( sys tem-internal ) and general language use . These bridges could in turn be used in user interfaces as a kind of path finders to the information in conceptually structured knowledge bases (Cf. Kall iokuusi & Varantola 2000) . The aim of these thesaural and contex t - sens i t ive interfaces would be the same as that of d ic t ionar ies - to help users in their lexical knowledge management by giving them access to the informat ion they need.

Use and Usability of Dictionaries: Common Sense and Context Sensibility? 43

R e f e r e n c e s

Dictionaries:

O D E - Cambridge International Dictionary of English. Ed. Paul Procter. Cambridge University Press 1995.

COBUILD = COBUILD English Dictionary. Ed. John Sinclair. Latest edition London: HarperCollins 1995.

LDOCE = Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. Ed. Delia Summers. Latest edition Harlow: Longman 1995.

NODE = The New Oxford Dictionary of English. Ed. by Judy Pearsall. Oxford. Oxford University Press 1998.

OALD = Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. Ed. Jonathan Crowther [1948 Comp. A.S. Hornby]. Latest edition Oxford University Press, Oxford 1995.

Other references:

Atkins, B.T.S. Bilingual Dictionaries. Past, Present and Future. In Gellerstam, M., J. Jarborg, S-G. Malmgren, K. Noren, L. Rogstrom, C. Rojder Papmehl. Eds. Euralex '96 Proceedings. Goteborg: Goteborg University. 515-546.

Atkins, B.T.S. Ed. Using Dictionaries. Studies of Dictionary Use by Language Learners and Translators. Niemeyer.

Atkins B.T.S and K. Varantola. 1997. Monitoring Dictionary Use. IJL 10/l(International Journal of Lexicography). 1-45.

Barker, Thomas T. 1998. Writing Software Documentation. A Task-Oriented Approach. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Carliner, S. 1999. Knowledge Management, Intellectual Capital, and Technical Communication. In Communication Jazz: Improvising The New International Communication Culture. Proceedings 1999 IEEE International Professional Communication Conference. New Orleans, September 1999. 85-91.

Fillmore, C. J. & B.T.S. Atkins. 1992. Toward a Frame-Based lexicon: The Semantics of RISK and its Neighbors. In Frames, Fields and Contrasts. Eds. A. Lehrer & E.F. Kittay. New Jersey. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 75-102.

Fillmore, C. J. & B.T.S. Atkins. 1998. FrameNet and Lexicographic Relevance. In Proceedings of the First International Conference On Language Resources and Evaluation.. Granada, Spain. 417-23.

Fillmore, Charles J. and B.T.S. Atkins (1994): Starting where the dictionaries stop: The challenge for computational lexicography. Computational Approaches to the Lexicon. In B.T.S. Atkins and A. Zampolli. Eds. Computational Approaches to the Lexicon. OUP. Oxford. 349-93.

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Fontenelle, T. A Bilingual Lexical Database for Frame Semantics. In IJL

4/2000(International Journal of Lexicography). 232-248.

Hanks, P. 1994. Linguistic Norms and Pragmatic Exploitations, or why

Lexicographers neeed Prototype Theory, and Vice Versa. In Kiefer et al. Eds.

Complex '94. Papers in Computational Lexicography. Budapest. Research Institute

for Linguistics, Hungarian cademy of Sciences.89-113.

Hanks, P. 2000. Contributions of Lexicography and Corpus Linguistics to a Theory of

Language Performance. In Ulrich Heid, Stefan Evert, Egbert Lehmann, Christian

Rohrer. Eds. Proceedings of the Ninth Euralex International Congress, EURALEX

2000. Stuttgart. 3-13.

Kalliokuusi, V. and K. Varantola. 1998. From general dictionaries to terminological

glossaries. In Fontenelle, T., P Hiligsmann, A. Michiels, A. Moulin and S

Theissen. Eds. Actes EURALEX '98 Proceedings. Liège. 601-610.

Kalliokuusi, V and K. Varantola. 2000. User-Sensitive Lexical Databases. A case of

lexical knowledge management. In Eds. Ulrich Heid, Stefan Evert, Egbert

Lehmann, Christian Rohrer. Proceedings of the Ninth Euralex International

Congress, EURALEX 2000. Stuttgart. 393-401.

Temmerman, R. 2000. Training Terminographers: The Sociocognitive Approach. In

Ulrich Heid, Stefan Evert, Egbert Lehmann, Christian Rohrer. Eds. Proceedings of

the Ninth Euralex International Congress, EURALEX 2000. 453-460.

Varantola, K. 1997. On the information needs of Dictionary Users. In Karpova, O. Ed.

Aktual'nye problemy teoretiaeskoj prikladnoj leksikografii.lvanovo.

Varantola, K. 1998. Translators and their Use of Dictionaries. User needs and user

habits. In Atkins, B.T.S. Ed. Using Dictionaries. Studies of Dictionary Use by

Language learners and Translators. Niemeyer. Tubingen. 179-192.

Varantola. In print. Translators and disposable corpora.

Varantola. In print. Reflections on the use of corpus information

Electronic references

TheFrameNet Project. What is Frame Semantics?

http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/~framenet

The Word Sketches website. Killgarriff, Adam homepage.

http://www.itri.bton.ac.uk/~Adam.Kilgarriff

WordSmith Tools website, http://www.liv.ac.uk/~ms2928/index.htm